Archived

*READ THIS* When You Feel Like Quitting Your Design Business

This week I had two of my top-gun employees hand me their resignation letters... and I cried.

I just couldn’t hold it back. I couldn’t stop the tears. I had the puffiest eyes trying to put on a brave face for everyone in the office but I felt sick. I felt panicked. I felt beaten.

I just wanted to crawl into a thousands holes and die.

Have you ever felt like that?

Of course you have! Who am I kidding?!

That’s business.

And business is bloody HARD.

It’s like going to war.

Every day you’ve got to drag your exhausted, battered body out of bed, put on a brave (nervous) smile like everything’s gonna be okay, armour up and go in for battle.

You don’t know if it’s going to be peaceful on the front or whether you’ve got the tentacles of 10,000 men trying to suck every last inch of life out of you.

Some weeks feel like you’re never gonna catch a break. But you keep on fighting.

Suddenly it’s like a 25 round boxing match and you’re on the floor, all bloodied on your last breath asking yourself:

“What the hell have I gotten myself into? Who am I kidding? I can’t fight anymore, I’m done. I’m beaten. I’m not cut out for this. When is it going to end? When am I gonna have MY breakthrough? I can’t do it anymore. It’s all too hard….”

Then out of the blue you land that big job you worked your butt off for and things start looking up again. The sun starts shining, you hear the birds chirping again, the juices are flowing and the money’s rolling in. Life is great again. For a while.

Juuuuuust when you feel like you’ve finally figured it all out?

BAM!

Something happens and you’re in the thick of a war zone again.

Fighting tooth and nail for your life. Your dreams. Your freedom. You’re right to survive dammit.

And you start questioning your ability. All. Over. Again.

The worst part?

The more successful you become, the more people try and bring you down.

The more challenges you have to overcome.

The more you have to fight.

And the harder it gets.

But there is hope.

I want to share some encouraging words my mentor said to me years ago which really help me get through tough times. When you just want to quit. Or don’t know where to turn. Or you’re in a right old flap and not sure what to do….

Years ago, I was in a bad place. I had a dilemma on my hands. (One of many, believe me.)

Anyway, I rang my mentor, Ken, all upset, panicking and gave him the low down.

He said to me:

“Bianca, are you going to remember this in 2 years time?”

I thought about it long and hard and kept silent, tears rolling down my face.

He said “Let me put it another way... Are you going to be losing sleep over this in 2 years time?”

I said “No, probably not.”

And he said “Well it doesn’t matter then, does it?”

You can imagine my reaction. I was like “WTF? Do you not understand, this is going to cost me a fortune, I’m done. This could ruin me. I suck at business. I can’t do this anymore...”

He said “No my dear, you can fix this. It’s not that big of a deal really. It’s just business.”

He went on to tell me that I just had to roll with the punches.

I had to learn how to ride the waves. Up. Down. Up. Down. Up. And bloody down.

He said I had to just learn how to better ‘react’ to the situations and understand it was all part of the journey… the war.

"You just have to learn how to ride the tiger."

Close your eyes and picture yourself riding a tiger for a minute. It’s pretty powerful.

So when he said that?

I had this incredible rush of pure calm wash over me.

Suddenly everything I was stressing about just seemed so insignificant. So fixable. So... nothing.

I was just overreacting to something that was part of my journey. It was just another lesson I had to learn the hard way to get to where I wanted to go.

It was meant to be this way.

It was business. And business is fucking hard. Remember, business is WAR.

It’s not for the faint hearted either, as you know.

Sometimes I wonder if we have some kind of genetic flaw with all the shit we put ourselves through. I mean, who does this to themselves, really? What's wrong with us?

This year I’ve been through the ringer… a hundred times over.

It makes my other saga I mention look like a piss in the ocean really. This year has been my worst yet. My most challenging. One that I had to reach to the deepest depths of my soul and question my entire being a thousand times over just to make it through.

So much so that I’m surprised (and damn well proud) that I survived it at all…. it was THAT bad.

Just when we thought it was over, BAM, another kick in the guts. And another. And another!!!

But Ken’s saying just kept with me... “You just gotta ride the tiger. Ride the tiger. Ride the tiger.”